Every morning, like most sensible Trinidadians–a minority–I mentally put on shining, black armour, strap myself into the car, take a deep breath and drive off to work, hopeful that I will arrive alive.From the second I pull out of the area where I live, my life seems to be in the hands of madmen. It is the same returning. It's a ten- to 15-minute drive at most, except when WASA decides to dig up part of the Cocorite stretch at 8 in the morning or 4 in the afternoon. Then it becomes a nightmarish, one-hour torture session.
Even when there is little traffic, I expect to receive at least two "bad drives" and innumerable other instances of lack of basic civility, from drivers cutting in, to refusals to let me pass, to running the red light (so common at the intersection of the Diego Martin Highway and Crystal Stream Avenue as to defy description), to old souls driving at 40kph in the fast lane.
Lane! That's a foreign language. There are drivers who do not know about passing lane and fast lane and slow lane and believe that a line that separates lanes is to guide you to where you are going. Some mornings it's so bad that I, who detest air-conditioning in a car, am forced to turn it on, put on a CD of soothing music and pretend that I am driving in Brittany or rural Maryland.
The old Diego Martin Main Road is a narrow, crudely paved throughway where cars skim past within feet of each other under normal circumstances. The average speed must be in the low 50s–totally unacceptable. I seldom see a police patrol on that road, but then, the sight of any police car anywhere in T&T is enough to make one's heart stop. As I turn left into the main road, there is, some 30 feet away, a manhole cover which raises itself about two inches above the road surface. Oncoming cars, having decided that silly little protuberances on streets must be avoided at all costs, see it late (most Trinis drive looking at the street 20 feet in front), and suddenly and violently swerve into my lane to avoid it.
There is nothing I can do to avoid them; only my brakes have saved me from a head-on smash-up on more than one occasion. I never make the turn unless there are no cars coming. That takes time and patience.It is little wonder that so many people die or are maimed for life from motor vehicle accidents (MVAs). Bad roads, alcohol and other drugs, illegal cell phone use, lack of consideration for others and absent traffic police spell disaster. As expected, most crashes are due to driver error. The major factor in driver error is overconfidence and Trini drivers full of that.The statistics are troubling and hurtful. Throughout the globe, over 3,000 people die every day from MVAs. That's about 1.3 million people killed on the world's roads each year. Fifty million more are injured.
The global economic cost of MVAs was estimated at US$518 billion per year in 2003, with US$100 billion of that occurring in developing countries. Motor-vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death and injury of young people aged five through 30 here in T&T, as well as anywhere else in the world. Not Aids, not heart, not asthma, not dengue, not murders, but MVAs, and it's totally preventable! That is the shameful part.Young drivers in general are two to three times more susceptible to experience a crash. During the first six months of obtaining the privilege of a driver's licence, young drivers are eight times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than more experienced drivers.As experience grows, crash rates go down. Around age 75, the process reverses and fatal accidents involving elderly drivers rise markedly. The crash rate for drivers 85 and older is roughly the same as for teenagers.
From 2007 to 2011, in T&T there were 173,000 reported road traffic collisions. This equates to 34,600 collisions per annum, with as many as 200 fatalities a year. Over 11,000 people were reported injured in that period. People aged 15 to 35 accounted for almost half of the fatalities. Eighty-three per cent of them are young males and 43 per cent are innocent pedestrians.Every 16.8 minutes a collision occurs on our nation's roads.Every hour spent on our roads means there is a 25 per cent chance of a collision and therefore a 25 per cent chance of serious injury or fatality.For 2012, 163 lives were lost on our roadways, a three per cent increase over 2011, when 159 lives were lost.So far, up to the middle of April this year, there have been 40 fatal road traffic accidents with 52 deaths. We are well on the way to crossing the 150 mark again.I hope neither me nor mine is included in that figure, but the way people drive, is luck, oui! Luck and defensive driving.
*All statistics courtesy Arrive Alive
